Haunting Melody
by CeruleanStarGlow
Summary: Rough hands pluck the song so well recorded into his mind, and the two other occupants of the loft are halted, and are brought back to memories they tried to erase so long ago.
1. Nightmares

Rough hands plucked at the strings of a red fender guitar. Those hands fell into the familiar fingering of Musetta's waltz. The melody hung in the air of the loft, penetrating the paper thin walls and reaching the ears of the two other occupants. On a thin mattress, in a freezing bedroom, a thin, frail woman laid quietly, awake, though her eyes were closed and her breathing was steady. Drops of cold sweat dripped achingly slowly down her pale forehead. Images flashed passed her eyes like scenes flashed across a movie screen.

A small girl… six or seven years old cowered in a corner of the living room, hidden behind a ratty old couch. A sickening crack, and then she heard a scream, and salty tears burst from her eyes, running silently down her cheeks. Tiny arms wrapped around her small head, warding off blows not directed at her.

And then the tiny girl was older. Her face was more mature, changed from angelic and childlike, to sexy and teenaged. A smile could make you melt, but now her lips were straight, and her face was contorted with fear. Music was pounding into her ears, throughout her entire body, shaking her hand as it clutched the needle. Then with a deep breath she pressed it to her arm and felt the short bearable pain that gave into the unbelievable and unnatural bliss.

And then more and more images flashed through her mind, faster and blurrier and nondescript. Many, many people flashed by… a couple making out, a young girl passed out on the hardwood floor, a guy maybe two or three years older than her handing her a drink. A vague notion of being pushed up against a wall and having her dress ripped off. And then he was gone, and she couldn't recall anything about him. Not his face or his clothes or his voice. And he disappeared into the crowd of drinking, dancing teens. Her mind flashed more images… useless memories of people she once knew, and then stopped at the image of a young teenage boy… thirteen or fourteen years old. He gathered the small Latina body in his arms and carried her away from the music and the smoke and the heat of the party, outside into the cool autumn air. He held her and wiped away her tears and wrapped the ripped, slinky dress around her shivering body. And slowly the feeling returned, and the girl could remember pain… and exhaustion, and hurt, and love. And her mind saw a single flash, a silhouette of two figures walking down a sidewalk at some ungodly hour, with one's arms wrapped protectively around the other's small body. And then it faded out, and she saw no more…

Six years later, she lay on her thin mattress and she could still feel the warmth of an arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders, guiding and supporting her. And she could hear the haunting melody of Musetta's waltz echoing through the loft, ringing in her ears.


	2. Film Reels

For what seemed like the thousandth time, mark heard the familiar notes of Musetta's waltz ring through the freezing loft. He sighed, and turned away from the sound, towards the projector set up in his room. His hands shook from the December chill as Mark sorted through an old cardboard box of film that he figured was mostly shot when he was in high school. He picked up one roll of film and put it into the projector. With the press of a button an image appeared on the off white walls of his room.

The teenage boy was almost unrecognizable at first. Roger was smiling. He didn't smile much anymore, and he wasn't so thin back then. His bare arms could be seen by the camera, and they were completely void of track marks. He looked, obviously, younger, and carefree. Mark hadn't thought of this roger in a long time. He hadn't seen this roger since high school, since heroin.

This roger was sitting on a bench with his arm out to the side of him, resting on the bench with a cigarette dangling between his fingers. Roger smirked at the camera and then raised it to his lips to take a drag. The camera zoomed in to his face, and an annoyed expression replaced the smirk. He blew smoke into the lens, which pulled back a bit and then panned around to Roger's back. It zoomed back, and roger turned into a silhouette against the orange-pink sunset. He turned toward the camera a bit, and then turned back, and raised the cigarette to his lips again, and pulled it back, to rest on the top of the bench.

And then the shot changed.

And Roger was lying on the couch in his eternally messy bedroom. He was listening to music, but then looked up to the camera, probably listening as mark spoke. He glared at the camera after a few minutes, and then gave him the finger, before looking away, and closing his eyes, his head bobbing slightly to an unheard beat.

Then the shot changed again.

A silhouette of two people were walking down a suburban sidewalk. They turned towards the camera, and mark wanted to turn away. Roger and April stood hand in hand, their smiles wide. He hadn't seen a video of April since he had found her in the bathroom, had avoided the video's with her, because he couldn't bear to see her face. The camera zoomed in as roger spun April around and pulled her close to him, wrapping his arm around her waist. They walked down the sidewalk, and the camera caught up with them and panned around to the front. The couple stopped walking for a moment, and kissed, softly at first, but then the two were making out ferociously, and mark heard himself shout from behind the camera.

"Get a room!"

April pulled away, and with a grin she reached forward and snatched the camera away from Mark, and it spun around to reveal his face. He didn't remember what he had looked like then. Small and geeky, with his hair cut in a way that was ugly even a decade ago, when this was taken.

April handed the camera to roger then, and then went to pull Mark away from his beloved contraption. She grasped his hands, and started trying to tango with him, although he was trying to escape her grasp 

to get back to his camera. After a few moments of struggling he got away from her, and he ran to grab his camera. The shot ended.

There wasn't another.

The projector's steady, low buzz stopped, and the room was dark. The haunting melodies of Musetta's waltz returned to his ears, and he clenched his eyes shut.


	3. Moonlight

His fingers danced over the frets, and he didn't even need to think, as he played the familiar song. His eyes were fixed onto the wall, bathed in the moonlight. The song drifted out of his mind as memories played across his vision. Short flashes.

A boy climbing out of his second story window and jumping to the ground painlessly. His silhouette blurring as he and his girlfriend ran across the street and down two blocks to just another boring suburban home. The knocked on the door, and when it opened, they slid in and hurried downstairs to the basement. Music thumped as the two bodies moved together. And then another flash.

Years later found the couple in a dingy club, the boy clutching his red fender guitar, and the redheaded girl dangling a cigarette from her fingers. The boy had just finished a gig, and the two of them sat in one corner, with his band, passing around little white baggies and a used needle. Then there was a flash, only a flash, of a picture he had tried to cast out of his mind for years. The redheaded girl lay still in a bathtub stained crimson.

He clenched his eyes shut for a moment, and the picture disappeared, replaced by a memory he had almost forgotten. The rocker laid on the couch, shivering next to a small, geeky, young, blond, man, who for once in his life, didn't' have a camera clutched in his hands. The rocker let out a moan, as his insides started to feel like they were burning up. The blond man pulled the rocker into his arms and brushed the sweat off his forehead. Slowly, he stopped convulsing, and the two of them fell asleep in each other's arms.

And then the memories flashed forward again, and the rocker was standing on the rooftop, pulling the blond man close to him, with tears in his eyes. Santa Fe wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

Roger sighed as the memory faded out, and he found himself, once again, staring at the empty wall in front of him. The moonlight turned the room to an eerie blue as the haunting notes of Musetta's waltz faded from the loft.


End file.
